Ol' Grumpy's guide to outdated content and you
by Matthew Rossi 
May 25th 2011 at 7:00PM
Well, it means several things.
- Current heroic raid content will remain unchanged. Heroic Cho'gall, heroic Atramedes, heroic Nefarian will all be as difficult as they are now. So you won't see guilds that are 9/12 normal mode waltzing into heroic BoT and killing Sinestra the day 4.2 goes live. She's still going to be ludicrously hard.
- The raids we currently have will become outdated content the day Firelands becomes available, the same way Naxx became outdated when Ulduar came out and Trial of the Crusader became outdated when ICC came out. They will no longer even reward you with valor points, and all current valor point gear will switch to being purchasable with justice points (the same points one can get for running normal 85 dungeons). This means that entry-level raiding will be obsolete, and the only people doing it will be people just starting out or a few completists.
- Therefore, it is in the interest of the game to let people see this content once it becomes obsolete and move on as quickly as possible.
- You can return your seat to its normal, upright position now. If anyone is telling you that this is an outrage, a slap in the face, a nod to the casuals, the ruination of the game, or the horns of the dread Armagedillo poking forth, they're wrong. And possibly a hysterical maniac who overreacts to a simple armadillo pet.
Look, to say this again: The second that patch 4.2 drops and we have Firelands and a new boss in Tol Barad's Baradin Hold, this current content becomes yesterday's news. It immediately loses its status as cutting-edge content. If anyone is struggling on it due to lack of gear, time constraints, or even an inability to complete it, that no longer matters. The content you're meant to be doing for bragging rights is over in the Firelands, folks.
Accessibility for a bunch of old content you've already been doing for months doesn't affect you at all. It's not as if it will provide anything a raider on the cutting edge of content will care about. It will provide gear that is the same ilevel as justice point purchases and justice points -- same as any normal level 85 dungeon.
Players who won't be able to raid Firelands will likely go into these raids to see them for the first time, and there's nothing wrong with that. They're a whole tier of content behind you, anyway.
Combine this with the fact that the heroic level encounters are seeing no changes at all, and you completely avoid any sort of "dumbing down" of content you did when it was hard. The hard stuff is staying hard. Frankly, some of the raid encounters were probably a bit overtuned for people coming into them in 346 blues, anyway. If you are long past normal raiding and are working on heroic Atramedes, those heroic kills you have already done are not going to be accomplished by people in a handful of epics in 4.2.
This is exactly like when all current raid content was nerfed at the end of The Burning Crusade so that people could see it before Wrath dropped. It's exactly like the scaling ICC buff that let groups progress after the hardest of the hardcore have already burned through it.
The sky is not falling.
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Lightwarden May 25th 2011 7:03PM
Guessing you meant Sinestra...not Sindragosa...wrong expansion
georgeb.fleming May 25th 2011 7:04PM
And by Sindragosa, I assume you mean Sinestra.
D May 25th 2011 7:07PM
/cheer
Henri Poincaré May 25th 2011 7:10PM
The voice of reason! And of course the sky isn't falling. Not until we kill Al'Akir, right?
Deadalon May 25th 2011 8:19PM
The voice of reason failed to mention that this nerfs will take away time, money and testing that should be focused on bringing in more fresh conent into the game.
Tyrannus May 26th 2011 4:15AM
@Deadalon
You are kidding, right? You've got truckloads of content coming up in 4.2, and you're whinging about some existing content getting what Im sure is (in development terms) a minor tweak.
Get some perspective.
Durenas May 26th 2011 6:14AM
@Deadalon
Untrue. It takes very little time and next to no testing to dial numbers down 20%
Zanathos May 26th 2011 1:42PM
Here's how the testing is going to work.
First they reduce things by 20% and it goes live.
If not enough people are dropping in, it goes down another 20% in a minor patch.
Not very cost intensive.
Hollow Leviathan May 25th 2011 7:16PM
That's what boggles my mind, when people on the forums or in their youtube channels (not to name names) rage against this change in the very sentence where they admit it does not affect them.
I personally think this change addresses two criticisms: firstly, that people have to run heroics until they're blue in the face to gear up for raids, and secondly, that raids become totally obsolete the moment the next tier opens up. The way it is now, people can now choose between chaining heroics or viably running the previous raid to gear up for the current one.
That sounds like a great change to me!
Xsinthis May 25th 2011 7:43PM
There's still holes in the available 359 gear that can't be filled by valor points, so its either fill it with 353 from the ZA/ZG runs, or do some T11 raids for them
Blacksen May 26th 2011 3:14AM
"The raids we currently have will become outdated content the day Firelands becomes available, the same way Naxx became outdated when Ulduar came out and Trial of the Crusader became outdated when ICC came out."
There's a difference between "outdated" and "irrelevant" or "trivial." Outdated just means exactly that: it's no longer up-to-date. But there were still weekly, if not daily Naxxaramas PuG's while Ulduar was current. There were ToC PuG's while Icecrown was current. ToC 25man dropped the same ilvl as the Icecrown heroics. Naxx 25man still dropped better than 5man heroics.
For me, the disappointment is that the content loses its replay value.
Molten Core has so little replay value because it doesn't offer anything - there's no challenge and no relevant gear.
But back in Icecrown, ToC had replay value. In Ulduar, Naxx had replay value. The gear mattered to a large portion of players.
But now with Firelands, you're killing off the replay value of the tier beforehand. With ilvl 365 stuff coming from *DAILY QUESTS* and ilvl 359 from heroics, you're losing any semblance of relevancy. The nerfs just kill it off by removing the challenge.
Durenas May 26th 2011 6:17AM
@Blacksen The replayability of Molten Core lies in rare legendary drops and Hydraxian reputation for the rep grinders. I still do weekly MC runs for the chance of another binding and/or eye of rag.
Goodk4t May 26th 2011 9:41AM
Let's focus on the word "PuG". For about 190 realms, out of the 241 USA realms, Tier 11 PuGs don't happen. Simple as that. Unless it's an alt run from some guild, people just aren't on par to PuGs the current content. Those 20% nerfs will allow exactly what you want: the replay value.
What's the point of wipping on Blackwing Descent for ilvl 359 gear when you can get ilv 353 from ZA/ZG and ilvl 365 from daily quests without stressing yourself? Those nerfs will make it so it's worth to run those raids for gear and be sure the nerfs won't make the raids easier than they were in Wrath of the Lich King.
Baba May 26th 2011 10:35AM
To be honest, I want unskilled players to sit up or shut up.
That's why people are complaining about the nerfs.
Djinn May 26th 2011 1:45PM
The other way to think about this guys is this:
Right around the beginning of ICC i had been raiding on my Elemental Shaman for a good long time since the beginning of NAXX almost 3-4 nights Every week and I got burned out on it. So I needed a change of main it turned out to re energize me for ICC. I found that in my DK at the time. But I didn't have the time or ability to keep with my current raid team progress AND be gearing up a new main at the same time. So enter the TOC patch and suddenly I have decent epics on par with things i could get in Ulduar dropping from 5 man stuff that yeah was a little harder than Utgarde Keep heroic but also had better reward gear.
Fast forward to now and after the massive burnout that I suffered during Wrath due to my aggressive raid schedule and I have no toons that can step into any raid at all right now, but you know what? I can now get the 359 purples out of a badge vendor that I can grind up doing 5 man content that is becoming less and less difficult to get through and poof I suddenly have the ability to get my toon ready for raids if I so choose to participate in them. This is not a bad thing folks..
Mr. Crow May 25th 2011 7:19PM
Of note? Apparently Heroic T11 Raids will still give Valor Points.
From the words of Bashiok himself: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2580698481?page=2#24
obandsoller May 26th 2011 9:14AM
Yes, but the Heroics aren't getting nerfed. Are they?
BlindWorg May 25th 2011 7:22PM
"You can return your seat to its normal, upright position now. If anyone is telling you that this is an outrage, a slap in the face, a nod to the casuals, the ruination of the game, or the horns of the dread Armagedillo poking forth, they're wrong. And possibly a hysterical maniac who overreacts to a simple armadillo pet."
I guess totalbiscuit equals this in his latest azeroth daily, the guys one big troll/dramaqueen
Blayze May 25th 2011 7:57PM
I always used to call Nagrand!Garrosh Tears McEmo, but it seems the title befits the nerdrager more.
VioletArrows May 25th 2011 8:02PM
I thought that was really weird as well. I agree with him most of the time, but my head tilted a full 90 degrees when he started growling about it, considering some of the other things he's talked about directly contradicts that attitude. And of course after he pitches a fit, he crows about getting a bunch of new subscribers (for what I don't know, why would anyone subscribe to someone putting the content they came to listen to on hiatus...)